From Protest to Practicality

Tomorrow will mark a week since close to 600,000 people gathered across the country for the Tax Day Tea Parties. And everyone’s now struggling to answer the obvious question: “what next?” Or, maybe more important, “what now?”

There needs to be a collective discussion on what our next steps should be. But, before that, there are a couple things that should not happen:

The Tea Party movement must not become a tool of a political party or ideology. Everyone already thinks that the movement was funded and pushed by some vast group of right wing puppeteers. Yes, cutting taxes and government spending/inteference are conservative principles…but not necessarily Republican ones. The Tea Party movement must remain on message, and welcome everyone to the table who believes in that message…including Blue Dog Democrats.

People must check their egos and ambitions at the door. It would be a shame to watch the Tea Party movement become what, to some degree, the pro-mission movement has become: a collection of various small groups that share the same members and resources, but are rarely able to come to consensus on overall messaging and strategy. Unfortunately, that’s already beginning. Tea Partiers must realize that movements such as ours are easily killed by individual ambition-especially at their outset. We are one group, united under a common mission and purpose. Building spinoff groups could well prove fatal to that mission.

So, what should happen next?

At some point, the Tea Party movement must begin to discuss practical solutions to the issues we protest against. Legitimacy isn’t gained-or maintained- by just filling large venues with disgruntled citizens. We must seek to provide those same citizens-and the cynics-with the alternative ideas and programs to what we disagree with. There will come a time where we will have to just sit down in a room and discuss issues like the fair tax or flat tax from an intellectual level instead of an emotional one.

Most importantly, though, we must strike the delicate balance between maintaining our relevance and oversaturation. Of course, everyone has to remain involved, but we shouldn’t always aim for the big event to keep ourselves in the public eye. At a local level, Tea Partiers should seek out those organizations that share our mindset and ideals, and work with them to keep up their enthusiasm and interest until the time comes for us to gather again as a group.

This is a plan for moving forward. As it’s been said, our choices are hanging together, or hanging separately.